Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area

The Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area or Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) is the complete area covered and directly influenced by Greece's second-largest city, Thessaloniki. The metropolitan area traditionally consisted of the municipality of Thessaloniki and its immediate surroundings, what is today referred to as the Thessaloniki Urban Area. However, since the mid to late 1990s, the areas surrounding the urban area, have succumbed to urban sprawl and what used to be agrarian communities are rapidly urbanizing and being developed into suburbs or exurbs. This is creating new problems for a region already facing issues such as pollution, traffic congestion and social ills.

Thessalonians usually refer to 13 municipalities and one community as the "City of Thessaloniki" (or the Thessaloniki Urban Area); this is the contiguous densely built-up urban area of the city. However, the metropolitan area also includes the city's immediate surroundings, adjacent zone of influence and its low to medium density suburbs that surround the densely built-up urban area.

Metropolitan area

A metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as a metropolitan area, metro area or just metro, is a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing industry, infrastructure, and housing.
A metro area usually comprises multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships, cities, exurbs, suburbs, counties, districts, states, and even nations like the eurodistricts. As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions. Metropolitan areas include one or more urban areas, as well as satellite cities, towns and intervening rural areas that are socio-economically tied to the urban core, typically measured by commuting patterns.

For urban centres outside metropolitan areas, that generate a similar attraction at smaller scale for their region, the concept of the regiopolis and respectively regiopolitan area or regio was introduced by German professors in 2006.

Metropolitan areas in Portugal

The metropolitan area (Portuguese:área metropolitana) is a type of administrative division in Portugal. Since the 2013 local government reform, there are two metropolitan areas: Lisbon and Porto. The metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto were created in 1991. A law passed in 2003 supported the creation of more metropolitan areas, under the conditions that they consisted of at least nine municipalities (concelhos) and had at least 350,000 inhabitants. Several metropolitan areas were created under this law (Algarve, Aveiro, Coimbra, Minho and Viseu), but a law passed in 2008 abolished these, converting them into intermunicipal communities, whose territories are (roughly) based on the NUTS III statistical regions.

The branches of administration of the metropolitan area are the metropolitan council, the metropolitan executive committee and the strategic board for metropolitan development. The metropolitan council is composed of the presidents of the municipal chambers of the municipalities.

Urban area (France)

An aire urbaine (literal and official translation: "urban area") is an INSEE (France's national statistics bureau) statistical concept describing a core of urban development and the extent of its commuter activity. When applied to larger agglomerations, this unit becomes similar to a U.S. metropolitan area, and the INSEE sometimes uses the term aire métropolitaine to refer to France's larger aires urbaines.

Composition

The aire urbaine is based on France's nationwide map of interlocking administrative commune municipalities: when a commune has over 2000 inhabitants and contains a centre of dense construction (buildings spaced no more than 200 metres apart), it is combined with other adjoining communes fulfilling the same criteria to become a single unité urbaine ("urban unit" ); if an urban unit offers over 10,000 jobs and its economical development is enough to draw more than 40% of the population of a nearby municipalities (and other municipalities drawn to these in the same way) as commuters, it becomes a pôle urbain ("urban cluster") and the "commuter municipalities" become its couronne ("rim"), but this only on the condition that the urban unit itself is not part of another urban cluster's rim. The aire urbaine is an urban cluster and its rim combined, or a statistical area describing a central urban core and its economic influence on surrounding municipalities.

Thessaloniki (regional unit)

Geography

The regional unit stretches from the Thermaic Gulf to the Strymonic Gulf. The Thermaic Gulf lies to the southwest while the Strymonic Gulf is in the east. Two bodies of water are located to the north, Lake Koronia in the heart of the regional unit and Lake Volvi to the east. There are farmlands throughout the western and the southwestern part, a few in the northeast, the north and along the Axios River valley. The mountains include the Chortiatis to the westcentral part, the Vertiskos to the north and parts of the Kerdylio mountains to the northeast. The regional unit borders on the Imathia regional unit to the southwest, Pella to the west, Kilkis to the north, Serres to the east and Chalkidiki to the south.

Its climate includes hot Mediterranean summers and cool to mild winters in low lying areas and its plains. Winter weather is very common in areas 500 m above sea level and into the mountains.

Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area

The Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area or Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) is the complete area covered and directly influenced by Greece's second-largest city, Thessaloniki. The metropolitan area traditionally consisted of the municipality of Thessaloniki and its immediate surroundings, what is today referred to as the Thessaloniki Urban Area. However, since the mid to late 1990s, the areas surrounding the urban area, have succumbed to urban sprawl and what used to be agrarian communities are rapidly urbanizing and being developed into suburbs or exurbs. This is creating new problems for a region already facing issues such as pollution, traffic congestion and social ills.

Thessalonians usually refer to 13 municipalities and one community as the "City of Thessaloniki" (or the Thessaloniki Urban Area); this is the contiguous densely built-up urban area of the city. However, the metropolitan area also includes the city's immediate surroundings, adjacent zone of influence and its low to medium density suburbs that surround the densely built-up urban area.

Large sections of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki have been without water for a ... Hundreds of thousands of people in the metropolitanarea of 1.2 million, which includes the city’s suburbs, have been affected....